Things are looking up for Mumbai on the water front because at least three of our big lakes are close to their overflow levels.

Things are looking up for Mumbai on the water front because at least three of our big lakes are close to their overflow levels.

Heavy rainfall in the city’s catchment areas has seen an increase of more than 35,000 million litres of water in the lakes that feed the city, diminishing the threat of increased water cuts that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has been considering.

Currently, the lakes have 8.5 lakh million litres of water – Mumbai needs about 13 lakh million litres to comfortably sail through the year.

On Friday, across the six lakes — Tansa, Modak Sagar, Vihar, Tulsi, Upper Vaitarna and Bhatsa — that supply Mumbai 3,400 million litres of water a day, there was a total of 8.2 lakh million litres of water. On Sunday, that increased to 8.6 lakh million litres.

“It’s been raining well in the catchment areas. If these three lakes overflow it’ll be good, but the other two — Upper Vaitarna and Bhatsa, which are major suppliers — are well below the overflow mark,” said BMC Chief Hydraulic Engineer, Dinesh Gondalia.

Some parts of the city including Mulund, Bhandup, Dahisar, Goregaon, Dindoshi and Deonar saw heavy rainfall on Saturday night continuing till Sunday afternoon.

While the city recorded 13.99 mm rainfall, the western and eastern suburbs got 30.11 mm and 56.74 mm respectively.

The rain deficit, which crossed the 400 mm mark last month, was down by half till Sunday.

IMD data says the city received 1,575.1 mm – 234 mm short of the normal average. The suburbs are better at 1,890.1 mm – only 162.6 mm below the average mark.

Heavy rainfall over the weekend not just in the city but across the state made this possible.

Vigorous movement by the southwest monsoon has created a low-pressure formation above the Bay of Bengal since September 4, resulting in heavy rain. “We’re expecting another such depression in about three days. If that happens we could soon cover the rain deficit,” added Sharma.

On Sunday the city saw heavy rain after many parched, dry days (when it rained less than 2.5 mm). The city got twice the amount of rain in the suburbs. Santacruz recorded 12.9 mm, while Colaba got 24.9 mm.

But that didn’t affect city traffic. Flights were on time and local train services was unaffected.